In the dispensing of medication, there is a universally recognized problem of getting the prescribed amount of medication to the patient at the prescribed times. If the medication is taken at the wrong times, or is not taken at all, or is taken in an improper dosage, the medication will not function in the manner prescribed by the physician and can therefore be dangerous and perhaps even fatal, if not accurately controlled. This responsibility can be difficult to control for people since they get involved in their everyday lives and quite often forget to take or give to persons under their charge, the medication at the proper times. This can particularly be a problem for elderly people whose memory is not what it once was.
Some people working in the geriatrics field have been quoted as saying that many elderly people could be kept out of retirement homes or rest homes for as much as five or six years or more, if the medication of such elderly persons could be controlled accurately at their home. Obviously, someone, either a professional or the children of such elderly people, must take the responsibility for giving the medication at the proper time, (often three or four times per day) and in a proper dosage for such persons. It is not uncommon that some individuals on medication regularly coax, threaten or coerce professional staff or family to give them the medication before the proper time. If such medication is being dispensed by a machine, then the patient can only blame the machine and not the person responsible for giving them the medication, thereby easing tensions, and ultimately this would be for their better health since medication was taken as prescribed.
Medication, particularly antibiotics, would be of much greater benefit to children or other convalescing persons, if they are taken at the prescribed regular intervals and if the total prescription were to be taken. Typically, the actual times for a desired four-hour interval ranges from two to eight hours and then, as the patient begins to feel better, the medication is not taken at all, leaving potentially harmful pills in a medicine chest or the like. Often times the patient then relapses, since all of the medicine was not taken. Consequently, there is a need to provide an apparatus to prevent this situation.
In addition to the need for being able to control the dosage of medication and the time for taking such medication, there is also the problem of limiting access of the medication from an aged person who cannot be trusted to take only that which has been prescribed. Elderly people often take all the pills for a given day in existing pill holders at one time, even though the medication was to be taken at three or four different times. For a child too young to know the difference or staff working at a hospital who may desire to use the drugs for illicit purposes, access should be prevented. The prior art solutions to the aforementioned problems are shown generally by U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,876,629 to Fisher et al.; 3,911,856 to Ewing; 3,921,806 to Wawracz; 4,223,801 to Carlson; and 4,573,606 to Lewis et al. All of the aforementioned prior art patents use a disc or cylinder having compartments therein and then rotating such cylinder to feed the medication through an opening. Generally, this category of dispensers are limited because they are either manually operated or they will have only a limited number of storage compartments, thus they can only dispense for short periods of time. Furthermore, they are not tamper-proof or pilfer-proof as a general rule.